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AP Article Completely Distorts the Connection Between Black Americans and Palestinians
Family members, friends, and supporters of Israelis and other nationalities who were taken hostage on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists during a deadly attack march after they began a few days march towards Jerusalem, in Latrun, Israel, Nov. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
A global influence campaign linked to Russia uses spoofed versions of legitimate news websites to misinform the public about the war between Hamas and Israel.
According to a report in Haaretz, this “Doppelgänger campaign” spreads disinformation using “replicas of websites of respected legacy media outlets across the world,” including the French newspapers Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Le Parisien; Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt and Bild in Germany; the Israeli sites Mako and Liberal in Hebrew; and the English-language Jewish Journal, a prominent Jewish American outlet.
The Dec. 17 Associated Press article, “Black American solidarity with Palestinians is rising and testing longstanding ties to Jewish allies,” left this CAMERA researcher wondering whether the storied AP had also fallen victim to the Doppelgänger campaign.
But a careful examination of the link, along with the fact that the article appears on the Lexis-Nexis news database, confirms that the piece’s provenance is authentically the AP. The piece’s reporting, on the other hand, is as detached as could be from AP’s vaunted journalistic standards. Inverting the Doppelgänger campaign, this real AP story masquerades as fake news.
Indeed, a second CAMERA researcher reacted after reading the piece: “Is this an Op-Ed? Does AP publish Op-Eds? Because it reads like one. A really terrible one.”
Intent on shoehorning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre) into the struggle of Black Americans against racism, it’s no wonder that AP video journalist Noreen Nasir and race and ethnicity editor Aaron Morrison ignore the shocking video of the final terrifying moments of the life of Joshua Mollel.
Mollel was a Black, Tanzanian agricultural intern who came to Israel in September to study farming. Hamas terrorists brutally murdered him, gleefully capturing the barbaric attack on video, and kidnapped his mutilated body to the Gaza Strip. (Warning: the difficult, very graphic video of Mollel’s murder is available here.)
Mollel was not Hamas’ only Tanzanian victim. Clemence Felix Mtenga, also a cohort in the agricultural internship, was also murdered by Hamas.
The video showing a Black man brutally slaughtered for the crime of studying in Israel fails to conform to the baseless narrative promoted by those who “see the Palestinian struggle in the West Bank and Gaza reflected in their own fight for racial equality and civil rights” — a narrative that the AP writers platform without challenge. Freely editorializing as if they are op-ed as opposed to news writers, Nasir and Morrison continue: “The recent rise of protest movements against police brutality in the U.S., where structural racism plagues nearly every facet of life, has connected Black and Palestinian activists under a common cause.”
But what common cause does Palestinian brutality, which did not spare the life of even non-Israeli Africans, have with Black Americans’ fight for racial equality and civil rights?
Indeed, the insistence on molding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into the image of the American civil rights movement is a known ploy of anti-Israel activism, falsely casting Israelis as white oppressors.
As Einat Wilf wrote in Sapir Journal in 2021 (“How Not to Think About the Conflict“):
And so, in an act of blatant neocolonialism, the American story is viewed as the universal prism through which all societies should be understood and analyzed. Blithely ignorant of the specificity of their own experience, the neocolonialists fit the square peg of the conflict into the round hole of American history. Jews are bizarrely cast as “white,” and Zionism as a movement of “white supremacy,” while Arabs, who look exactly like Jews (Fauda, anyone?), are cast as “people of color.” The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is cast as a mirror of race relations in America, but without the relevant local context of slavery, Jim Crow, or any of the specificities of Jewish, Arab, or Middle Eastern history.
The AP writers depict the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the Middle Eastern version of the American civil rights movement through the eyes of Cydney Wallace. The AP reports that the Black Jewish activist recently returned from a West Bank trip that reinforced her view that Palestinians are fighting the same civil rights battle as Black Americans. “Back home in Chicago, Wallace has navigated speaking about her support for Palestinians while maintaining her Jewish identity and standing against antisemitism. She says she doesn’t see those things as mutually exclusive,” recount Nasir and Morrison.
The AP gives no indication that Cydney Wallace’s Jewish identity is anything but mainstream. In fact, she is very much on the fringes of the widest definition of what constitutes Jewish community.
Wallace is a member of Beth Shalom B’Nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, which serves the Black Israelite community and does not represent the mainstream Jewish community including Black Jews who adhere to American Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform Judaism. While Judaism recognizes as Jewish those born within the Jewish community, or converted to Judaism under the auspices of recognized rabbinic authorities, the Black Israelite community is based on self-identification.
An in-depth Anti-Defamation League backgrounder on the very diverse Black Hebrew Israelites community explains: “The Black Hebrew Israelite (BHI) movement is a fringe religious movement that rejects widely accepted definitions of Judaism and asserts that people of color are the true children of Israel.”
Nevertheless, the AP simply ignores Wallace’s noteworthy affiliation, falsely casting her religious identity as mainstream Judaism.
Exploiting Wallace’s “Jewish identity” without disclosing the atypical nature of that identity, the lengthy article ostensibly explores the dynamics between antisemitism, the Black experience in America, and the supposed intersectionality with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In doing so, the AP writers entirely ignore antisemitism within the Palestinian population. Indeed, a 2014 global survey carried out by the Anti-Defamation League found that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are among the world’s top antisemitic “hot spots,” with 93 percent of the population harboring antisemitic views.
Sky-high Palestinian antisemitism, just like Hamas’ brutal murder of Tanzanians, belie the tale of Palestinians as the Middle Eastern equivalent of oppressed Black Americans. The same dynamic is at play as the journalists blandly downplay Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities as “the unprecedented Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas militants.”
In exactly what way was the Hamas attacks were unprecedented — was it the “historic win for the Palestinian resistance,” as anti-Israel campus groups put it, or the sheer number of civilian victims; the deliberate targeting of children, women, and elderly; the widespread rape, torture, mutilation, beheadings, burning alive, murder of children in front of parents and vice versa; the kidnapping of hundreds of Israelis and foreigners, including children and even a nine-month-old baby?
Nasir and Morr don’t say. By contrast, regarding “Israel’s ensuing bombardment of the Gaza Strip,” the duo suddenly locate “shocking images of destruction and death.” It is as if, through the authors’ eyes, there were no shocking images of destruction and death from Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
Indeed, Nasir and Morrison simply can’t shake the compulsion to withhold adjectives when it comes to the Hamas atrocities, even as they extend adjectives highlighting the severity of Israel’s response. In this vein, they persist: “None of the members of [Wallace’s] ‘Black Jerusalem’ trip anticipated it would come to a tragic end with the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 taken hostage. Since then, more than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s blistering air and ground campaign in Gaza, now in its third month.” [Emphasis added.]
The pattern downplaying Palestinian violence manifests again with respect to the hostages and Palestinian prisoners released in prisoner exchanges. The AP reports:
During a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas as part of the recent deal to free dozens of hostages seized by Hamas militants, Israel released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Many were teenagers who had recently been picked up in the West Bank for minor offenses like stone-throwing and had not been charged.
Strikingly, the reporters take care to note that many of the released Palestinian prisoners were teenagers held for “minor offenses” and were not charged. (Unmentioned are the released Palestinian prisoners convicted of attempted murder, and others charged with stabbings. In addition, the “minor” offense of stone-throwing has been known to kill and seriously injure.)
In contrast, the partisan pair provide zero details about any of the 105 released hostages of all ages — from toddlers to octagarians — whose only crime was to be Israeli (whether Jewish or Arab) or associating with Israelis (as in the case of the Tanzanian students, along with dozens of Thai and Nepali workers). Almost all of the Israeli hostages released so far have been elderly women, mothers, and children. They are guilty of no offenses and “had not been charged.”
Silence on Black Antisemitism
Palestinian antisemitism is not the only anti-Jewish bigotry which gets a pass. “The 39-year-old said she had plenty to focus on at home, where she frequently gives talks on addressing anti-Black sentiment in the American Jewish community and dismantling white supremacy in the U.S.,” the AP duo report about Wallace.
But they gloss over existing anti-Jewish sentiment in certain pockets within the Black community, including within elements of the Black Hebrew Israel movement, while expanding on Black support for Palestinians:
From Black American groups that denounced the U.S. backing of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory to Black protesters demonstrating for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, some Jewish Americans are concerned that support could escalate the threat of antisemitism and weaken Jewish-Black ties fortified during the Civil Rights Movement.
The journalists also under-report the grotesque antisemitism embedded in Black Lives Matter movement, stating:
In 2016, when BLM activists formed the coalition known as the Movement for Black Lives, they included support for Palestinians in a platform called the “Vision for Black Lives.” A handful of Jewish groups, which had largely been supportive of the BLM movement, denounced the Black activists’ characterization of Israel as a purportedly “apartheid state” that engages in “discrimination against the Palestinian people.”
But the Movement for Black Lives did not stop at false apartheid charges; it also accused Israel of genocide, which, according to the widely-accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, constitutes antisemism. As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander previously reported: “One section, headlined ‘Invest-Divest,’ accused the US, through its alignment with Israel, of complicity in what the authors called the ‘genocide that is taking place against the Palestinian people’ and Israeli ‘apartheid.’”
Other BLM manifestations of antisemitism include at least one documented riot organized by a BLM leader in Los Angeles targeting a historic Jewish neighborhood.
And, as our colleagues at CAMERA UK have noted, “BLM groups in Los Angeles, Chicago and DC issued statements . . . literally supporting Hamas’s barbarism. BLM Chicago tweeted an image of a Hamas paraglider with a Palestinian flag attached to his parachute and the caption ‘I stand with Palestine’ before evidentially deleting the tweet following criticism.”
The far left are showing their true colors. Here Black Lives Matter Chicago are celebrating the butchers who arrived on paragliders at a music festival and brutalized and murdered hundreds of defenseless young people at a music festival. Difficult to comprehend. pic.twitter.com/lduVCnzgdj
— Eoghan McCabe (@eoghan) October 10, 2023
Critically, some Black Hebrew Israelites completely reject Wallace’s notion that the Palestinian experience is analogous to the Black American experience, and argue that Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre underscores the commonalities between the Jewish and Black stories. But AP, which boasts that it seeks to “expand the reach of factual reporting,” silenced voices and facts which contradict its predetermined narrative.
A message from this Hebrew Israelite to the Black and LGBTQ communities. #MustWatch pic.twitter.com/dl0gJ1BfK8
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) December 18, 2023
The AP’s effort to pass off the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the Middle Eastern doppelgänger of the civil rights movement, with the Palestinians playing the part of Black Americans battling against racism, is nothing short of a parody of journalism. In short, it’s a real news outlet playing at fake news.
With research by Adam Levick.
Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office. A version of this article previously appeared on the CAMERA website. See also “Black Lives Matter, JVP’s Deadly Exchange, and Israel” and “The BLM Movement and Antisemitism“
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Drexel University Professor Stole Signs From Synagogue, Police Say
Illustrative: People pass a cluster of signs outside a pro-Hamas encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect
A Drexel University professor allegedly participated in a mass theft of items from a synagogue in a suburb outside Philadelphia, a local NBC affiliate reported on Tuesday.
Mariana Chilton, 56, a professor of health management and policy at Drexel, has been accused of stealing pro-Israel signs from the Main Line Reform Temple in Lower Merion Township, traveling there from her neighborhood of residency, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Chilton allegedly drove the getaway car while two other accomplices, Sarah Prickett and Sam Penn — who is from New York — trespassed the synagogue and absconded with the loot.
“We are just taking them because we feel like it is a representative of genocide,” Chilton told law enforcement after being caught in the act, the report stated. She then, after offering to “just put them back,” refused to identify herself and comply with other lawful orders.
Video evidence provided by a local resident placed Chilton and her accomplices at the scene of the crime, and a Main Line Reform Temple official identified the signs recovered from her car as the temple’s property. That was enough for law enforcement to charge her with several offenses, including conspiracy and theft. She is also charged with driving without a license and not registering her vehicle.
Drexel University has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.
Experts have told The Algemeiner in the past academic year that while the conduct of anti-Zionist students should be reported on, the role of faculty in fostering and engaging in antisemitic acts should be closely scrutinized. Last semester, anti-Zionist faculty attached themselves to anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations, sometimes breaking the law by preventing officers from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers.
At Northeastern University in Boston, professors formed a human barrier around a student encampment to stop its dismantling by officers, and at Columbia University, anti-Zionist faculty at the school, as well its affiliate Barnard College, staged a walkout in support of the demonstrations and demanded the abeyance of disciplinary sanctions against anti-Zionist students — dozens of whom cheered Hamas and threatened more massacres of Jews similar to Oct. 7 — who violated school rules.
Chilton’s case is unlike any other reported in the past year, however. While dozens of professors have been accused of abusing their Jewish students and encouraging their classmates to bully and shame them, none are alleged to have resorted to stealing from a Jewish house of worship to make their point.
Mass participation of faculty in pro-Hamas demonstrations marks an inflection point in American history, Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on the Middle East and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner in April.
Since the 1960s, he explained, far-left “scholar activists” have gradually seized control of the higher education system, tailoring admissions processes and the curricula to foster ideological radicalism and conformity, which students then carry with them into careers in government, law, corporate America, and education. This system, he concluded, must be challenged.
“The cost of trading scholarship for political propagandizing has been a zeal and pride among faculty who esteem and cheer terrorism, a historical development which is quite telling and indicative of the evolution of the Marxist ideology which has been seeping into the academy since the 1960s,” Romirowsky said. “The message is very clear to all of us who are looking on from the outside at this, and institutions have to begin drawing a red line. The protests are not about free speech. They are about supporting terrorism, about calling for a genocide of Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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White House Cites Biden Clash With Netanyahu Over Iran as Proof of President’s Mental Fitness
US President Joe Biden hosts the 2023 Teacher of the Year event at the White House in Washington, US, April 24, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Amid growing concerns over US President Joe Biden’s mental fitness, key White House officials are suggesting his foreign policy discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including a clash over how to respond to Iran’s unprecedented military attack on the Israeli homeland earlier this year, serve as evidence that he is still capable of leading from the Oval Office.
Biden and Netanyahu engaged in a heated back-and-forth in the immediate aftermath of Iran launching a massive missile and drone salvo at Israel in April, according to a new report by the New York Times. The US and other allies helped Israel shoot down nearly every drone and missile. The attack caused only one injury.
However, the Times revealed that while Netanyahu initially wanted to respond to Iran in a forceful way, Biden threatened to withhold US support in the event of a major Israeli retaliatory strike, arguing it would risk sparking a regional conflict in the Middle East.
“Aides present in the Situation Room the night that Iran hurled a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel portrayed a president in commanding form, lecturing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone to avoid a retaliatory escalation that would have inflamed the Middle East,” the Times reported. “‘Let me be crystal clear,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘If you launch a big attack on Iran, you’re on your own.’”
“Mr. Netanyahu pushed back hard, citing the need to respond in kind to deter future attacks,” the report continued. “‘You do this,’ Mr. Biden said forcefully, ‘and I’m out.’ Ultimately, the aides noted, Mr. Netanyahu scaled back his response.”
Israel’s military response was small and appeared aimed at minimizing the risk of escalation.
The Times report, headlined “Biden’s Lapses Are Said to Be Increasingly Common and Worrisome,” came on the heels of Biden delivering a widely-panned presidential debate performance last Thursday against former US President Donald Trump. Biden’s performance, which oftentimes appeared incoherent and muddled, set off alarm bells in Democratic circles, sending the president’s allies scrambling to extinguish concerns over his age and mental acuity.
While highlighting rising concerns, the news story also noted instances in which, according to aides, Biden appeared coherent and capable, citing the exchange with Netanyahu and his handling of the Iranian missile attack more broadly as one such example.
However, an anonymous Biden administration official told the Times that they are unsure whether Biden could hold his own against adversarial foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin of Russia.
On Wednesday, the White House directly attributed quotes to Netanyahu in which the Israeli premier reportedly said he found Biden “very clear and very focused” during his visit to Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. According to a White House spokesperson, Netanyahu also reportedly cited the “more than a dozen phone conversations, extended conversations with President Biden” as evidence of the commander-in-chief’s vitality.
“Some White House officials adamantly rejected the suggestion of a president not up to handling tough foreign counterparts and told the story of the night Iran attacked Israel in April,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Biden and his top national security officials were in the Situation Room for hours, bracing for the attack, which came around midnight. Biden was updated in real time as the forces he ordered into the region began shooting down Iranian missiles and drones. He peppered leaders with questions throughout the response.”
During its first direct attack on Israeli territory, Iran in April launched roughly 300 missiles and drones at the Jewish state.
Leading up to the attack, Iranian officials had promised revenge for an airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria that they attributed to Israel. The strike killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a widely designated terrorist organization, including two senior commanders. One of the commanders allegedly helped plan the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the incident.
“After it was over, and almost all of the missiles and drones had been shot down, Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu to persuade him not to escalate. ‘Take the win,’” Mr. Biden told the prime minister, without reading from a script or extensive notes, according to two people in the room. In the end, Mr. Netanyahu opted for a much smaller and proportionate response that effectively ended the hostilities,” the article added.
Days later, Israel responded to the Iranian aggression by launching a modest missile attack on an airbase near Isfahan. The Jewish state sought to show that it could effectively target key strategic locations in Iran while not escalating the conflict any further. Netanyahu insisted on launching a retaliatory attack against Iran, arguing that ignoring the Iranian strikes would incentivize more attacks against the Jewish state.
IRGC Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that Iran is waiting for “the opportunity” to launch a new round of strikes against Israel, Iranian media reported on Tuesday, potentially boosting Netanyahu’s argument that a smaller response would invite further attacks.
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Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.
Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page.
Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.
According to The Chronicle‘s website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.
One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.
Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.
Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”
That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.
Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.
So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.
And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.
Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.
Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.
The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.
“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.
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